University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-2017 Stories at work : restorying narratives of new teachers' identity learning in writing studies. Rachel Gramer University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Part of the Higher Education and Teaching Commons, and the Rhetoric and Composition Commons Recommended Citation Gramer, Rachel, "Stories at work : restorying narratives of new teachers' identity learning in writing studies." (2017). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2678. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/2678 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STORIES AT WORK: RESTORYING NARRATIVES OF NEW TEACHERS’ IDENTITY LEARNING IN WRITING STUDIES By Rachel Gramer B.A., Rollins College, 2001 M.A., University of Central Florida, 2008 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English/Rhetoric and Composition Department of English University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky May 2017 Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0 U.S.) 2107 By Rachel Gramer Some Rights Reserved STORIES AT WORK: RESTORYING NARRATIVES OF NEW TEACHERS’ IDENTITY LEARNING IN WRITING STUDIES By Rachel Gramer B.A., Rollins College, 2001 M.A., University of Central Florida, 2008 A Dissertation Approved on April 17, 2017 By the following Dissertation Committee: Mary P. Sheridan Bronwyn T. Williams Brenda Jo Brueggemann Tatjana Soldat-Jaffe Jessica Restaino ii DEDICATION These pages and this project are dedicated to the supportive women, feminist mentors, and loved ones who have encouraged me to tell, to change, and to live out so many stories— and whose stories and storytelling remind me every day why we are here and how we should live. “I could tell you stories— if only stories could tell what I had in me to tell.” —Patricia Hampl, “Red Sky in the Morning” iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am forever grateful for the relentless encouragement of Mary P. Sheridan. You continue to teach me how to be a feminist by daily living like one. Without your good questions, my work would not be as complex or meaningful; without your devotion to me figuring out how to put myself on the disciplinary map, this project would not have been mine and I wouldn’t have learned as much about being a researcher; without your time, especially in this final year, this document would not have come to fruition; and without your fierce support, my doctoral education would not be marked in my memory by nearly as much pride, joy, or confidence. Your friendship is a gift through which you bring and inspire presence and gratitude, glorious irreverence and effervescent laughter. I am also deeply grateful for the care and thoughtfulness of Jess Restaino. Your enthusiasm has sustained me when my own was depleted. This project would not be possible without your work, First Semester, and I would not have seen nearly as much of the potential of my own work without you and yours. Connecting with you and discovering your feminist forthrightness and human hilarity have been the most buttressing surprises of this dissertation. I am so thankful for the support of my full committee at various points in my doctoral education and always when I needed them most. Thank you, Brenda Brueggemann, for infusing whimsy and laughter into moments otherwise weighty with frustration and doubt, for your prescient seeing and listening to what is present as well as iv absent, and for your extensive time spent reading this document and thinking deeply about who we are and who we’d like to be as teachers, researchers, and administrators. Thank you, Bronwyn Williams, for kindly, repeatedly reminding me that education is a tremendous act of hubris and humility worth trying for as long as we have the energy and stamina (and we do)—not for ourselves, but for our students, for writers, for those who deserve our support. Thank you, Tatjana Soldat-Jaffe, for your support for my work and this project whichever direction it turned and for much-appreciated cheerleading from the sidelines whether beyond my field or across state lines. In countless moments in between and around this project, I have also been privileged to experience the patience, comfort, and encouragement of an amazing crew of family and friends-who-are-family. My parents, Debbie and Tom Gramer, continue to teach me how to love, listen, and support others by modeling those behaviors with me. Thank you for listening to far more work talk than anyone should have to endure and for articulating your faith in me at every turn. Keri Mathis and Laura Matravers sat with me through every dark moment, especially during the last two years, by text and by call, by gif and by emoji. Thank you, Keri, for welcoming me into your family, being the Pot to my Kettle, and shining so brightly in ways that illuminate us all. Thank you, Laura, for sharing your time, couch, cat, and weirdnesses and for mentoring me in return to deepen my own eccentricities and truths. I am also deeply grateful for other lovely people who have made the past four years in Louisville such a gift: my fantastic writing group and cohort, Liz, Megan, Laura, Jamila, Travis, and Michelle; and my wondrous peers and friends, Hollye, Caroline, Mike, Layne, Tasha, and Justin. And finally, I am deeply indebted to so many Florida “peeps,” past and present, who have contributed more to my v own story than we will ever know; my Florida friends have taken me in and wrapped me up repeatedly when I needed care most, including Kathleen Bell who has continued to mentor me with her sharp candor, keen smarts, and bottomless belief in my capacity to learn and do good work in the world. To the five participants who gave me their time, energy, and goodwill, I cannot thank you enough; not only are your stories creating and shaping the story of this project, but also your enthusiasm and learning make my work that much easier and far more compelling than I can possibly make it alone. And to the scholars whose histories and perspectives precede and infuse my work—including Debra Journet, Gesa Kirsch, and so many others—thank you. Your stances toward stories and toward research have enabled me to build my own. I am also—always—deeply indebted to my grandmother, Opal Miller, who so proudly introduced me as “this is my granddaughter, Rachel,” right up until the end; accompanying her through the process of dying is still the accomplishment of which I am most proud and which, in many ways, nudged me onto the trajectory of fierceness and trust that this dissertation represents. vi ABSTRACT STORIES AT WORK: RESTORYING NARRATIVES OF NEW TEACHERS’ IDENTITY LEARNING IN WRITING STUDIES Rachel Gramer April 17, 2017 Rhetoric and composition has a long, robust history of studying how we train new writing teachers in our graduate/writing programs; yet we lack in-depth inquiries that foreground how new writing teachers learn. This dissertation traces five graduate students learning how to be and become writing teachers, using narrative as an object and means of analysis to study the tacitly internalized process of newcomer professional identity learning. In this project, I enact narrative as a feminist, interdisciplinary methodology to restory new writing teacher research narratives away from implicit deficit or explicit resistance and toward a more generative focus on newcomers’ motivated learning and complex experiences mediated by understandings of teaching, learning, and education that precede, exceed, and infuse the program training and academic literacy histories that our research has historically privileged. Drawing on research in writing studies, education, sociology, and psychology, this dissertation conducts a narrative inquiry into new writing teachers’ identity learning by analyzing stories of teaching and learning elicited from five new writing teachers during a year-long semi-structured, text-based interview study. Using the interplay of vii thematic and structural analysis of participants’ 248 stories and artifact analysis of participants’ teaching texts, I practice narrative inquiry as an explicitly feminist methodology to destabilize and interrogate what we think we know about new writing teachers’ identities and understandings of learning (as in Chapter Three), experiences and teaching troubles (as in Chapter Four), and motivated desires for the future (as in Chapter Five). I also rely on interdisciplinary theories of learning and identity to understand new teachers as complex people mediated and motivated over time in ways that academic writing/composition theories alone have not adequately illuminated. Ultimately, I argue that new teacher research in writing studies should employ more complex methodologies for studying new writing teachers’ identities as learned and storied over time; and that listening rhetorically to newcomers’ stories and for learning and meaning-making is one way to interrupt unproductive assumptions about newcomer deficit